Campaign
Switzerland/ Norway
Brazil
The Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) supports indigenous communities in the Brazilian rainforest, enabling them to protect their habitat from destruction.
The Amazon is the world’s largest tropical rainforest. It is home to Earth’s greatest variety of animals and plants and is one of its largest CO2 stores. This is why the Amazon plays an important role for South America’s water reserves, for biodiversity and for the stability of the global climate. Around 60 per cent of the Amazon region lies in Brazil. Indigenous peoples have inhabited the Amazon for thousands of years – alone in the Brazilian part currently live around 900,000 indigenous people.
The Amazon is in acute danger, particularly in Brazil where, on average, an area of forest equivalent to three football fields is currently disappearing every minute. 2019 has seen an 84 percent increase in forest fires compared to last year. The right-wing nationalist president Jair Bolsonaro plans to exploit the Amazon by allowing mining, logging, and agriculture in nature conservation and indigenous areas on a grand scale.
President Bolsonaro intends to crack down on protests by activists and indigenous communities. But the indigenous communities are continuing their efforts to protect their territories and their rights, even under difficult conditions.
The Society for Threatened Peoples supports indigenous communities in Brazil in their efforts to protect their territories, and their push for self-determination and the observance of human rights. Help us! After all, the future of the rainforest and its people is our future, too!
The indigenous reserves are hugely important for the protection of the Brazilian Amazon. More than half of the intact Amazon is located either in nature reserves or in indigenous territories. Until now, indigenous reservations have been considered bulwarks against intruders as they have been protected by the Brazilian constitution. But to date, only 486 of the 722 indigenous territories are officially registered, and President Jair Bolsonaro has no intention of registering any new indigenous reserves.
Where the state is failing, indigenous communities want to take the protection of their territories into their own hands. In the Tapajós basin, for example, the community of indigenous Tupinambá and Mundurukú are peacefully taking a stand by marking their land. Members of the tribe go out into the rain forest in groups every two weeks to mark their territory with the help of colour, GPS and machetes. Thanks to this hard and time-consuming work, they will then be able to claim the land titles, to which they have a legal right, with the authorities.
But marking the boundaries is expensive, time-consuming and tedious, which is why the Society for Threatened Peoples is supporting the Tupinambá and Mundurukú communities in this process.
The Society for Threatened Peoples supports indigenous communities in Brazil in their struggle for their tribal land, self-determination and the observance of human rights.
Please help us by making a donation so that indigenous communities in the Brazilian Amazon can preserve the rainforest and exercise their right to self-determination.
While President Bolsonaro’s rhetoric and politics spur on the exploitation of nature and indigenous communities, European countries are also responsible as buyers of Brazilian products: Switzerland has also imported feed, beef, gold and palm oil from Brazil in recent years, including from the Amazon region. Now the EFTA countries want a free trade agreement with Switzerland and the Mercosur states, including Brazil.
As a member of the Mercosur coalition, the STP, together with other NGOs, demands that such an agreement should contain control mechanisms as well as binding sanction mechanisms with regard to indigenous rights and environmental protection.
In autumn 2019, a delegation of indigenous leaders travels through Europe to make European countries aware of their responsibilities in trade with Brazil. The STP is accompanying the delegation in Switzerland. It supports its appeal to Switzerland to take measures and to promote fair and sustainable economic relations.
Contact person at the STP:
Julia Büsser, STP campaign manager
Tel +41 (0) 31 939 00 13